AUDIO PRODUCTIONNo matter which category your production falls into, your audience will expect perfect audio production from your project’s soundtrack. Whereas an audience will accept a variety in image quality from production to production, they will equate a lack of audio clarity with a lack of ability or effort. Professional production values, both at the movies and on TV, have trained the listener to expect nothing less than audio perfection.Audio conveys almost all of the emotional impact in the visual medium. If you watch a favourite scene from any film or TV show with the sound off, you soon discover that the moving images are no longer emotionally involving. Yes, silent films could be scary, sad, happy, dramatic or interesting, but only because they were conceived without sound. One of the hardest concepts to accept for those new to Video Production is this;The better the job you do with your project’s audio, the less it will be noticed!For example, the audio production on most BBC mini-series is absolutely stunning; as good as anything you’ll ever hear. The work on any episode of “Inspector Morse” is flawless! But did you ever notice that? If we notice a sound mix though, it is usually because it was done incompetently. Great sound works on a subconscious level by drawing the viewer into what they are viewing. Great audio production supports and enhances the stories you are trying to tell.HOW SOUND WORKS Sound travels at 1,100 feet per second. Light travels at 186,000 miles a second. This can cause problems for you! For example, you shoot a subject 43 feet away from the camera (across the street) with a camera-mounted mic. A frame of DV (PAL) lasts for 1/25 of a second. In that time, sound can travel 43 feet. The video arrived to your camera instantly. The audio took 1/25 of a second. Therefore, your video and audio will be 1 frame out of sync! If you’re looking for it, you can discern sync errors of half a frame. Let’s say you avoid this problem and your video is shown in a viewing room, perfectly in sync, but you are 22 feet away from the screen. The audio will take half a frame longer than the video to reach you! In cinemas, they show the film out of sync by a couple of frames (depending on the size of the cinema), so that there is an acceptable level of sync for the majority of the audience. Sync can never be accurate in a large room for everyone, so sit in the middle of the cinema where it will be!RECORDING YOUR SOUND CLEANLY Camera work is planned long before shooting, with all the artistic decisions made before any cameras are turned on. Each production will create a variety of problems for the sound technician to overcome. However, regardless of any artistic decisions made about which sounds are to be recorded, all audio recording is done in the very same way, every single time, if at all possible! The only way to get professional results is to have every sound source recorded as separately and as cleanly as possible. End of story. That is that. Here’s an example from Out of Sight, where the director explains how they created a clean audio mix, despite it being a nightclub scene.http://youtu.be/-OT7etApV7MRECORDING ADR (ADDITIONAL DIALOGUE RECORDING)To record ADR, you’ll need a recording studio, or at least a sound booth. If you can’t afford to rent or build a sound booth, you might be surprised to learn that you may already own one. An almost perfect sound booth is your own (parked) car. Most modern car interiors are specifically designed to be quiet, deadening much of the sound from outside and limiting echoes within the cabin itself. If you live in a built-up area, you can drive into the countryside and find a quite location. By design, sound booths/parked cars have almost no Room Tone. Room Tone is the ambient sound of the shooting environment. It is recorded separately for use in patching, smoothing and matching ambient background levels when editing. It is imperative to record at least a few minutes of Room Tone in every sound setup. When the ADR (perfect audio with no Room Tone) is combined with the pre-recorded Room Tone, your recording will sound just like the recordings that were made on the original set. Here’s an example of ADR recording.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlf7nwwqYOw However, if you record ADR with a mic very close to the actor, (as you should), but the scene shows him speaking to a large crowd, it will not sound right. Why? Read on.DISTANCE The principal tools for establishing distance are Volume and Reverb.VOLUME The effect of the volume control is obvious, louder sounds being perceived as nearer. Decide on the most important sound element, (usually dialogue), set its level and then mix everything else in relation to that.REVERB Everything should sound as it looks. Close-ups have little reverb, while long shots have more. For example, a lapel mic usually sounds very dry. If reverb wasn’t added to the ADR from the Christopher Lee example, there would be a mismatch, with the viewer expecting more reverb as he is speaking to a very large crowd. Adding a subtle reverb will not draw the listeners attention consciously, but will make everything sound real.EFFECT SOURCES Buy some sound effects. These are called Foley effects. Not just things you couldn’t personally record like gunshots or rockets, but household sounds too. It saves so much time and effort to just buy them. For example, if you just need a ‘toilet flushing’ sound, you could get your device, go to the bathroom, record the flush, then capture it, edit and save the audio file. Even for an expert that’s a lot longer than ripping the sound from a purchased CD entitled “Household Sounds”, full of hoovers, washing machines, doorbells and the like. If you record outside, it’s almost impossible to get professionally acceptable results. You could wipe the entire audio track and re-record the dialogue. If it was a windy day, you would also have to add some Foley tracks of wind (the bushes and trees will be visibly moving) and any other event visually recorded. Having CD’s with a variety of tracks like ‘rustling wind.wav’ or ‘stiff breeze14.wav’ makes life so much easier.Remember, professional production values have trained the listener to expect nothing less than audio perfection. It is here that most amateur productions betray themselves, as even those with great visuals often have poor sound. The audio must be regarded as a crucial element if your efforts are to be watchable. For great examples of audio production try the Lord of the rings trilogy, or any Star Wars movie, even the prequels!